Need to crack the security on the wireless networks of 250,000 - that's almost two-thirds! - of Eircom's broadband customers so you can share copyrighted content without falling afoul of Eircom/IRMA's private HADOPI law? There's an App for that.

Technically the Dessid app is marketed as a "password recovery tool" though the author admits it could ( Read more... )

At Mumbai's International Telecommunication Union - Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (ITU-AIBD), the MPAA and it's cronies have been discussing locking down future TV broadcasts. They are now mortally terrified of their A-hole emissions reaching the tubosphere. As ever, there is a deep irony in organisations that make their ( Read more... )

Just to catch you up. This year my ISP, Eircom.net, settled a dispute with the Irish Recorded Music Ass. (IRMA) who had taken them to court over illegal file sharing. The claim was that Eircom were complicit in the illegal activities of their users. the evidence against them included internal emails showing Eircom execs joking about copyright ( Read more... )

All closed source code is invariably poorly written, containing bugs, mistakes, design flaws and security issues from beginning to end. For every ten lines of code there is a disaster waiting, and when that disaster comes to pass you'll be lucky if the system even reports it. Within the cloak of secrecy afforded by closed source code programmers ( Read more... )

You may have noticed that the UK government, with the kind assistance of Andrew Burnham MP of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is bowing to Hollywood and the record labels' various enforcement groups, essentially handing them the power to control the uses that UK citizens may make of their internet connections. ISPs have been given ( Read more... )

This is a translation of Don Reisinger's interview with the RIAA's Cara Duckworth for CNet. The translation is into English from Bullshit.

Don: Please tell me who you are and what you do.

RIAA: Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA.

Translation: Cara Duckworth, Recording Industry Ass. of America mouthpiece.

Don: What can you tell me about the ( Read more... )

A growing number of Swedish MPs are questioning the logic and legality of the recording industry targeting file sharers and forcing ISPs to help identify them. They have a simple and obvious solution that many of us will find familiar:

"Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It ( Read more... )

Listen, Glick, the movie industry is already doing the one thing that guarantees I will never illegally download their 'products', namely they are now making such deficient, low-brow, half-assed, worthless, over-hyped, over-funded, overwritten, sub intellectual, inadequate, substandard, ridiculous, inferior, scoff-worthy, malodorous, cringe-making ( Read more... )

"The BBC's head of technology denied rumors that a secret deal with Microsoft was behind the XP-only launch of the BBC's iPlayer. According to Ashley Highfield, the reason that the player only supports Windows XP is that only a small number of Linux visitors have come to the BBC's website."

tech.co.uk (via /.)

There is something deeply beautiful ( Read more... )

According to a report from ArsTechnica the fabled Blanket License has once again reared its head, this time in Denmark:

Andy Oram over at O'Reilly Radar noted the recent moves in Denmark to create a system where every ISP user might pay a monthly fee in order to access unlimited P2P music legally ( Read more... )